


La Commedia D'Amore (working title)

by Eshusplayground



Category: Fast and the Furious Series
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 06:45:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 16,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11307915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eshusplayground/pseuds/Eshusplayground
Summary: A series of vignettes about the relationship that develops between Letty and Gisele.





	1. Angel

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter (except Chapter 3, which is named after a movie) is named after a song. See if you recognize some or all of 'em. Give 'em a listen if they're unfamiliar. It helps set the tone.
> 
> Some of the chapters come with trigger warnings. These will be noted at the beginning of each individual chapter.

When she finally awakens, the light hurts her eyes. Her thoughts swirl with memories of heat, metal, and pain. Panic surges as her mind sends her back to that moment she was trapped in a metal coffin surrounded by the pungent odor of leaking gas. 

Then, it’s gone, and she’s lying on a hospital bed dressed in a flimsy white gown. There is a cast on her arm, and the stiffness in her neck is from the brace wrapped around it. Her forehead itches, but when she reaches up to scratch, she finds gauze instead of skin. What happened? Why is she here? How did she get here?

_Everything inside her is pain. It burns; it aches; it stabs. Her arm is on fire, her neck is killing her, and her head feels like it’s going to split open. Her vision blurs everything around her except the face of the one who dragged her off the road and brought her here._

_When she first saw her, she was sure she had died because only an angel could be so kind and so beautiful. She has to remember this, has to remember her if nothing else, so she studies every detail of her face: the clean lines of her brow, cheeks, and jaw; the delicate curve of her ear; the full, expressive lips; and those dark eyes filled with compassion and sadness._

_“Why did you save me?”_

_“Maybe you’re the one saving me.”_

_The doctors shoo the angel away before she can ask her name._

She’s awakened by something warm and soft stroking her cheek, and it’s her angel by her side once again.

“It’s no longer safe for you here,” she says, “I need you to get dressed. Can you do that for me?”

She has so many questions, and part of her gets the sense that the person she used to be would demand answers right now, but the urgency in the angel’s voice put every fiber of her being on full alert, and before she knows it, she’s dressed and walking out of the hospital, leaning on her angel whose name is Gisele.


	2. I Wanna Be Your Dog

The hotel they stop in is utterly unremarkable in every way, which is just how Gisele likes it. They have to leave first thing in the morning to keep ahead of whoever was after them. She would prefer to have more information, but she had to hurry and get Letty out of there.

A few discreet inquiries had coughed up the name of the woman she’d found unconscious and bleeding on the side of some back road in Mexico, and everything from the past few days, including Dom getting involved, makes sense. Dom has to know that she’s alive, but telling him anything before she’s safe would be a bad idea.

With some truly major players moving in on Braga’s operations, it’s likely that all of this will end with both herself and Letty in a ditch somewhere with bullets in the backs of their skulls. That doesn’t mean she has to make it easy for them. If she gets Letty to L.A., Dom’s friend Brian may be able to protect her. If Gisele had time to plan, they could have set everything up to let them get out of Mexico without any problems, but this…

This is going to take a miracle.

The sound of water being shut off takes Gisele out of her thoughts. The bathroom door opens, and Letty steps out wearing nothing but a towel clasped upon her slightly ruddy skin. Her damp hair clings to her shoulders. The water droplets sliding down her skin shimmer like diamonds.

Gisele lets out the breath she was holding.

“What?” asks Letty. Gisele licks her lips.

“Nothing,” she says.

Later, as she sleeps, Gisele dreams that she sinks on the bed atop Letty and kisses her dry.


	3. Drive

The way that black Nissan keeps ramming into the bumper isn’t doing Letty’s collarbone any favors. The way the passenger of that black Nissan keeps shooting at Letty and Gisele isn’t doing Letty’s nerves any favors, either.

As the cars speed along a dusty back road in Middle of Nowhere, Mexico, it occurs to Letty that it’s so typical that the one time she wants the cops there, they’re nowhere to be found.

The Nissan rams them again. Jesus, she’s gonna need more pain meds to recover from this. The only thing that keeps Letty from wailing in agony is watching Gisele drive. Gisele is so calm, so smooth behind the wheel. The only clue that she feels anything at all is the way her jaw twitches each time a round finds its way in the rear window.

Suddenly, Gisele yanks on the parking brake and spins the car so neatly it could turn on a dime. Letty’s stomach lurches, and she grips Gisele’s hand none too gently. A blur of black speeds past them. The Nissan tries to do the same turn but flips over and skids a few yards. Gisele hits the accelerator and leaves their pursuers behind.

As soon as the adrenaline leaves her body, the pain comes back with a vengeance, and Letty remembers that she didn’t grab any pain meds. How could she have been so stupid?

“Are you OK?” asks Gisele, brow creased in worry. The thought of Gisele being worried about her eases the pain ever so slightly. It doesn’t make the pain go away, but Letty can bear it better knowing that Gisele is there.

Her mind is drawn to the present when something soft grazes the back of her hand. Gisele’s thumb gently slides back and forth across that sensitive spot between her thumb and forefinger, and Letty’s chest suddenly feels heavy and light at the same time.


	4. Killing Strangers

Moonlight streaks through the gaps in the curtain covering the window looking out across the parking lot. Thanks to some powerful painkillers she picked up from the hospital at the border, Letty sleeps soundly in the bed. Gisele lies on a cot in front of the bed because she can’t trust herself to behave herself if she shares a bed with Letty. 

Gisele grips the smooth, cool handle of the 9mm under her pillow. It’s loaded and ready for anyone who comes through the door of this motel room.

Gisele’s phone buzzes, and her caller ID notes that Tomas, or someone with Tomas’ cell phone, is calling. Tomas is safe. Weak, a bit foolish, but not dangerous to anyone but himself.

“Yes?”

“Gisele? Fuck, I shouldn’t have called. Listen, this is probably a bad idea, but you were always good to me, and I know it was you who paid Braga for me.”

“What do you want?”

“The guy who’s after you? His name is Owen Shaw, and he’s, uh, on a whole new level.”

“What do you know about him?”

“British special ops turned merc. Now he runs everything. Guns, drugs, women, money, you name it. He knows about Letty, and he knows about you. You’re not going to LA, are you?”

“Why?”

“He’s got people in LA.”

“America is a very big place.”

“Not to him.”

Tomas hangs up. Gisele hopes he’s not dead.

“Why me?” asks Letty.

“Go to sleep. You need to rest.”

“Please? I gotta know. Did we know each other? Were we…together?”

Letty has no idea how much Gisele wishes her answer to be yes, but she can’t bring herself to take advantage of how much Letty doesn’t know.

(Like Braga would)

“We never met before I found you a few days ago.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Gisele glances at Letty whose clear, dark eyes reflect a soul so pure and a heart so true that she almost spills her guts right then and there. They will have plenty of time to go over her life story. Later, if they survive this.

“Gisele?”

Her defenses crumble, and she tells her everything: about Mossad, about working for Braga, about all the horrible things she had to do, the people she had to hurt, to get from a kibbutz that didn’t even have running water to eloping with someone she would have put a bullet in a year ago. 

She still doesn’t know why she did it. Letty was half dead, and the nearest hospital was at least an hour away. It would’ve been easier to put the poor woman out of her misery. Then, she didn’t. Perhaps it was the way Letty clung to life through sheer force of will, and she’s always appreciated strength. Maybe it’s because if she could help one person instead of hurting them, it means that she’s still human, that she still has a soul.

Something wet streaks down her cheek. Is she crying? Fuck. This is the last thing they need. This is no time to be weak. She has to be ready for Shaw when he comes.

“It’s OK,” whispers Letty, who has scooted behind her on the cot and wrapped an arm around her to snuggle close. It does feel better.


	5. Accelerator

The ride through the tunnel to cross the border is dangerous, scary, and a helluva lot of fun. There are tight turns on a dirt path illuminated only by dim light. Even a single mistake can turn this car into an accordion, and no one would be able to find them.

Of course, Gisele handles it without breaking a sweat because she’s amazing like that. Sometimes, when she passes a particularly difficult part that Letty’s sure will wreck them, Gisele’s eyes light up, and she makes a Mona Lisa smile. This turns Letty on more than she wants to admit.

They emerge from underground in what looks like a one-room shack in the middle of a rocky desert with cacti and shrubs dotting the ground. An hour later, they finally get to a proper road. 

Gisele hits the breaks and looks straight at her as if looking for something inside her. Anyone else might’ve been freaked out by that look, but it makes Letty feel seen, known. It comforts her in a way she can’t explain.

“Where to?” asks Gisele. She licks her lips in that way she does. She probably has no idea how sexy that is.

“I dunno. Let’s go everywhere.”

Gisele smiles, puts the car in drive.


	6. When the Saints Go Marching In

They can’t go to L.A., so they head east through Texas. The wide, open green gives Gisele a sense of freedom that her life often lacked. This would be more fun on a motorcycle, especially with Letty pressed against her and hugging her tight from behind as the motorcycle vibrates beneath them. 

Letty drives even though her arm and collarbone still have weeks to go to heal, but the bright smile that lights up Letty’s face makes Gisele’s heart beat faster. The wind sends Letty’s hair in all directions. Gisele resists the urge to tug some of it behind her ear because if she does, she might sneak a kiss, and that would be

(wonderful)

inappropriate. Besides, she owes Dom her life, and stealing kisses with Letty behind his back would be a terrible way to repay him. Anyway, Letty might not even like women that way.

They stop in New Orleans and rent a room at a bed and breakfast in the French Quarter. There is still some evidence of Hurricane Katrina in those places that tourists don’t go, but there’s still color and music, joy and life.

There’s only one drawback, and that’s the food. Everything is made with pork and shellfish, but it smells so good, and Letty eats it like it’s made of sex. Gisele’s never been as strict about kashrut as she’s been taught, but pigs and shellfish are definitely off the list.

Letty holds out a spoonful of her gumbo.

“Want some?” she asks. She has no idea.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“It’s _treyf_ —I mean, not kosher. The shrimp and the sausage are not—I’m not allowed.”

“Oh, right. It’s so easy to forget you’re Jewish.”

“Not to me.”

 

They get back to their room sometime after midnight, and they’re more than tipsy on all that bourbon they guzzled hours earlier. Jazz floats into the room from the street and mixes with their laughter. They hold each other to keep from falling. 

“God, you’re so fuckin’ tall,” slurs Letty, and Gisele realizes she must be drunk because to her ears it sounds like poetry. They plop on the bed as the room spins around them. Gisele closes her eyes, and it helps. When she opens them again, the room has stopped spinning. Letty silently leans over her and presses her lips against Gisele’s. She tastes like bourbon and spices. Gisele inhales the kiss, and God, it feels so 

(stop)

good, so

(you have to stop)

right, and she’s wanted this

(stop right now)

so much.

Letty peels off her skirt. It reminds Gisele of a snake shedding its skin. There was something she was supposed to tell Letty, something important. Then Letty unhooks her bra, and she only thinks about Letty’s perfect breasts and how much she wants to hold and kiss them, which she does.

 

Sunlight is peeking through the window when Gisele wakes up naked, sweaty, and sticky between her legs. Letty, sound asleep and also naked, snuggles close to her. Last night—

_She kneels between Letty’s legs, drunk with the smell and taste and texture of her, high off the sounds she makes as she licks and kisses and strokes._

What has she done? How could she do this to Letty? To Dom? What the hell is wrong with her?

“Hey, sexy,” says Letty. Her voice is groggy with sleep, but to Gisele it sounds like opera. Gisele wants to respond to her, but the words are stuck in her throat, as if God has punished her by striking her dumb.

“What’s wrong?” asks Letty. She’s gotten far too good at reading her. Gisele can’t tell if that’s a Letty thing or a slipping off her game thing. Possibly both.

“I fucked up,” she says.

“What do you mean? Last night? Listen, you didn’t do anything wrong. I wanted last night, OK?”

“You were drunk. We were both drunk.”

“Yeah, but I was sober when I decided I would say yes if you asked me.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Dom?” asked Letty. She’s way too good at reading people. She would have done well in the intelligence field.

“You don’t understand,” says Gisele, “he saved my life, and the only reason he was even there to do that is because he came to Mexico looking for the one who killed you. He—he loves you so much. His love for you is pure and beautiful, and I ruined it.”

“You didn’t ruin anything. It was my choice.”

“But you’re his—”

“I’m not his!” screams Letty, “he doesn’t own me! I don’t know him! I don’t want him! He’s not here! Jesus! If everybody is gonna look at me and just see him, I’m glad I don’t remember!”

“Letty, that’s not what I—where are you going?”

“Out.”

“When will you come back?”

“Later, and don’t follow me.”

Letty slams the door behind her. This is exactly why Gisele doesn’t talk about feelings in English. Or Spanish. Or Arabic. Or Hebrew.


	7. Don't Take It Personal

Letty stopped being mad an hour into her walk, but curiosity has her strolling through the city, losing herself in clusters of tourists and residents. She spends a lot of time in a Voodoo shop staring at candles whose figures seem familiar, though she does not remember them. She gives the cashier a few crumpled bills to buy a candle with Love etched on its side. It doesn’t mean anything. She only buys it because it smells nice.

Her feet lead her along Canal Street then into the back alleys. The sun has set when she gets to the cemetery. The dead sleep in their stone beds above the ground. Does she also have a grave? What does her headstone say?

She shouldn’t have snapped at Gisele. Gisele has only been good to her, never pushing for more, even though, if last night is anything to go by, it must’ve been hard for Gisele to keep her hands to herself. Letty doesn’t know much about her old life, but she knows that some of the folks in that life aren’t the type to be trusted around a woman with no memory. 

Gisele was only trying to do the right thing by her and Dom, and got stung by Letty’s temper for her trouble. If Gisele had come sideways at her like that, she’s not sure if she’d want her around. Damn, how could she have been so stupid? Letty’s pride bristles at the thought of having to apologize, but she’ll woman up and do it.

She texts _I’m sorry_ to Gisele. There. No excuses, no explanations. Straight, simple, to the—

Her phone lights up with a text from Gisele: _r u ok?_

Even when she’s been a total bitch, Gisele is looking out for her. Letty’s heart swells. Would it have done the same in her old life?

Letty’s phone buzzes again. Where r u?

As soon as she reads it, Letty texts _I’m on my way_.


	8. No Particular Place to Go

The noonday sun beats down on the road. The radio says it’s seventy-six degrees outside, but with this humidity, it feels like ninety. The heat clings to them and makes their clothes stick. Letty has taken off her bra, and it takes all of Gisele’s self-control to keep her eyes on the road and not on her chest.

 _A Welcome to Georgia_ sign greets them as they cross into the state.

“I’m so fucking hungry,” says Letty, “do you think there’s a place where we can eat that doesn’t have the KKK waiting tables?”

Gisele laughs even though it’s not nice. They find a place to eat in Savannah, a quaint mom-and-pop diner with hearty portions for cheap. There is way too much steak for her to eat more than half of it, and Letty helps herself to the other half. What is it with Americans and huge slabs of meat?

They find a motel not too far from the diner. Gisele, per usual, plops onto the bed nearest the door, all the better to protect Letty and keep her hands to herself. New Orleans was…a mistake that she can never, ever repeat no matter how much she wants to. What makes Gisele feel like a complete asshole is that the thing she fears most is not Dom’s anger, or worse, disappointment if he ever finds out about them, but what would happen if Letty recovers her memories and chooses Dom over her. 

“Hey,” coos Letty from the bathroom, “wanna join me in the shower?”

The invitation to do more than bathe is obvious. Gisele should say she’s fine or tell her that it’s not a good idea. That would be the sane, mature, correct thing to do. But as soon as she turns toward the bathroom and opens her mouth to speak, Letty is leaning on the doorway, gloriously nude, and what comes out of Gisele’s mouth is, “OK.”

They stand entwined beneath the showerhead, breathing in heat and steam. Every kiss is a blessing, every touch a prayer. Eventually, the water gets cold, and they make their way to the bed. Letty straddles her lap, soaking wet. Gisele’s scalp tingles as Letty’s fingers comb through her hair. Letty kisses her deeply, and Gisele flinches and gasps when she feels Letty’s fingers. 

“Can’t wait to get this fucking cast off, so I can do this right,” says Letty while she rubs Gisele just so, and G-d, she’s already so close. Letty coaxes her toward climax, whispering how hot she is and how much she can’t wait for her to feel it. Then she—oh, fuck!

Gisele lingers in a fuzzy, post-orgasmic state where all that exists is Letty: Letty’s smooth skin, Letty’s sweet kisses, Letty’s soft whispers, Letty, Letty, Letty.

Later, as they lie beside each other, Letty seems deep in thought.

“I can be happy if it’s always like this,” she says.

“Like what?”

“Like this. Just you, me, a car, and an open road. Stopping only to eat, sleep, and fuck.”

When Letty puts it like that, it does sound nice.


	9. Panama

They don’t get pulled over until South Carolina. It’s not like they were going that much faster than the speed limit. Then again, sitting in Gisele’s lap and making out with her while she drove may have been a contributing factor. But, really, how is Letty supposed to just sit in her seat and do nothing when Gisele’s behind the wheel? That shit’s hot.

Blue lights flash in the rear view mirror. A state trooper in gray uniform and Smokey the Bear hat gets out of the police car.

“Be good,” warns Gisele, but it’s hard to take her seriously when she’s barely containing a smile. Letty gives her a peck on the lips.

The state trooper taps on Gisele’s window. Gisele lets the window down.

“Good afternoon. Remove the sunglasses, please,” he says. Gisele complies. The trooper flashes his light in her face.

“Do you know why you were stopped, ma’am?”

Gisele stays quiet. Letty wants to say something like _Oh, gee, Officer Pig, maybe it was because I was about to fuck my girlfriend behind the wheel?_ , but that might not go over well.

“License and registration,” says the state trooper, dropping the pretense of this being a friendly chat. Slowly, carefully, Gisele takes the license out of her purse and the registration from the visor. She hands both to the trooper. He goes back to his car.

Despite the blank expression on her face, Gisele taps her foot and fixes her eyes on the rear view mirror. Letty wonders if she’s thinking about making a run for it. If they get a big enough head start, they could get away.

“What’s taking him so long?” asks Letty.

“Shh,” says Gisele. 

Ten minutes later, the state trooper comes back to the car. He returns Gisele’s license and registration and gives her a ticket. Gisele doesn’t even look at it before tossing it into her purse.

“Am I free to go?” she asks.

“Yes, ma’am. Drive safely.”

Gisele doesn’t even wait for the state trooper to get in his car before she starts the car and hits the gas pedal. For the next fifteen minutes or so, she drives almost like an old lady, glancing in her rear view mirror more often than strictly necessary.

“What the hell was that all about?” asks Letty.

“I thought he might have been working for Shaw.”

“Shaw? But you said he’d be looking for us in LA. He can’t get to us all the way out here, can he?”

Gisele’s brow creases, and she says, “I don’t know.”


	10. Sign Your Name

They’re driving through New England when Letty starts wondering if what’s happening between her and Gisele isn’t just fucking anymore. It’s nothing specific, nothing so obvious that she can point to it and say _Aha! I knew it!_ Not that she’ll ever say anything. She’d rather jump out of the car on a freeway than talk or think about her feelings.

It’s not like a light switch being flipped on but more like pieces of a puzzle falling together from a jumble of moments.

Like when she was on her period, and Gisele gave her Advil and a hot water bottle for her cramps, and instead of snapping at her to leave her alone, she lets Gisele snuggle against her, and the cramps don’t hurt as bad.

Like how Letty finds reserves of patience and gentleness for those times when Gisele's guilt gets the better of her, and Letty finds herself offering soothing words and comforting touches to reassure her rather than biting her head off like she knows she can do.

Like the way Gisele peppers her words with Hebrew, which used to sound harsh and jarring to her ears, but from Gisele’s lips, it sounds like poetry when she calls her _neshama_ , _ahuvi_ , or _yakiri_. Sometimes, when they fuck (make love?), she coos to Letty in Hebrew between tender kisses. It makes Letty slow down and take it easy, luring Gisele's orgasm to her rather than chasing it as relentlessly as she is used to.

Like those moments when Gisele's doing something simple and mundane like running her fingers through her hair or biting her lip while she checks the GPS, and and the light hits her a certain way that makes her seem to glow. In moments like that, Letty's heart gets so full that she thinks she'll burst. Then Gisele looks at her and smiles, kissing her, and Letty remembers to relax, and this feeling, whatever it is, flows through her toward Gisele, and when it passes, she feels so light she could float on air.


	11. Baby Come Back

Gisele’s enjoying a big, juicy hamburger in one of Detroit’s top burger spots when her phone rings. She almost, _almost_ doesn’t pick up because the caller ID simply says “Unknown,” but something tells her that she wants to know who’s on the other end. Letty happily munches on a french fry stolen from her plate as Gisele flips open the phone.

“Yes?”

“It’s Dom.”

Gisele nearly chokes on her burger but recovers quickly enough to get up and head outside. She braces herself for the news that he knows about her and Letty, that she’s the lying, backstabbing bitch everyone says she is, that she’s poison and had better stay the fuck away from Letty and away from him. Of course, Dom would never say such things about her or any woman, but she almost wishes he would because it would feel better than always wondering what might happen next.

“Me and the crew got a job. You interested?”

“What kind of job?”

“A big one.”

“Where?”

“Rio.”

“I’m in. Bye.”

A job? In Rio? What the hell is Dom up to? She goes back to her seat in the restaurant. Letty’s eaten most of her fries, and she still hasn’t eaten half her burger. She doesn’t have much of an appetite anymore, though.

“What’s that about?” asks Letty.

“It was Dom.”

With three little words, cold reality smashes the warm, cozy dream they’ve been living these past few weeks. It was due to come up sooner or later, and they’d been avoiding long enough.

“What’d he want?” asks Letty, voice and posture tense.

“You are not going to like this, but I have to go to Rio.”

“Rio? Now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He needs me for a job.”

“So you said yes just because he asked you? He says, ‘Jump,’ and you just say, ‘How high’?”

“He saved my life, Letty.”

“So you’re just going to do what he tells you to do when he tells you to do it? What are you, his slave?”

It only takes a moment of irritation, just a split second, for her to wreck everything. Instead of taking a breath and counting to ten, she says, “He’s done more for me than you have.”

As soon as it comes out of her mouth, she tries to apologize, but Letty’s already gotten up, spilled her soda all over Gisele’s plate, and is walking toward the exit. She calls out to Letty, and Letty responds with two middle fingers before storming out of the restaurant.

Gisele tosses a couple of twenty-dollar bills on the table and heads out to catch up to her, but Letty’s already in the car and speeding out of the parking lot. Hopefully, Letty will go for a drive, cool off, and come back.

She stays at the restaurant until it closes, but still no Letty. She’s tried calling ( _i’m sorry_ ). She’s tried texting ( _pls come back_ ). The only response is a text that says _leave me alone_. 

There’s nothing else to do but to call a car service to take her to the airport.


	12. Wanted Dead or Alive

As soon as she leaves that diner, Letty wants to turn back. It’s so tempting. It would be so easy to crawl back into that waking dream she had with Gisele and go back to filling their days with driving and fucking with pauses in between to eat and sleep. Letty doesn’t know much about her old life, but being so protected, so cherished, and so wanted as she is with Gisele is…Letty doesn’t know what it is, but she wants more of it.

But there’s something else she’s gotta do, and she can’t do that while pretending that she and Gisele are the only two people in the world. She needs to think, needs to figure out what kind of person she’s gonna be. She can’t do that when she can’t go ten feet without someone or something reminding her of her old life.

So she drives and thinks and hopes that Shaw or whoever’s working for him doesn’t come calling. 

While she makes her way westward across the north, she files away the things she discovers about herself along the way, hoping that they come together into some sort of coherent whole.

A lot of who she is, it seems, centers around cars.

One: She likes to drive fast, and she’s good at it. She knows just how much and how hard to turn the wheel to weave between cars on the highway. Even with her arm still healing, she can turn and stop on a dime. It’s not just the speed and the power of having tons of steel at her command. It’s the freedom, that sensation that she’s being taken out of her body and hurling through space.

Two: She knows cars inside and out the way a doctor knows human anatomy. She can tell at a glance if what’s under the hood is working or not, and she can spot a car that’s been modified just from the sound its engine makes. It comes in handy during those odd jobs she gets fixing up people’s cars. It feels good to get grease on her hands, and the black smudge she gets on her sweaty face afterward looks…right.

Three: She’s got a mean right hook, which she discovers when some guy in Seattle gets too handsy with her at a race.

It’s after she decks his ass that she first catches a glimpse of the stranger with cold, unblinking eyes who seems to slither more than walk, like a cobra who has taken human form. He never approaches, just watches. Honestly, he gives her the creeps, so she steers clear of him, keeping him on the edge of her peripheral vision.

Until, at the end of one race, when he comes up behind her and speaks.

“Letty, is it?” he asks, voice slick as motor oil. He has a British accent. The hairs on the back of Letty’s neck stand up.

“Who wants to know?” she asks.

“Someone interested in your skills. You are quite impressive, and I’m not easily impressed,” he says. He gently tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear. It makes Letty want to puke.

“Listen, if you’re asking me to run money or drugs or anything like that, my answer is no.”

“Not at all. That’s far too pedestrian for you. I’ve got something much bigger and much better in mind. That is, if you are the Letty I’m hoping for.”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“That depends. I’m a…business associate of Dom’s.”

“Who?” she lies.

“Dominic Toretto. Does the name ring a bell?”

“Never met him. Is he supposed to be important?”

The stranger chuckles. It’s not a joyful sound.

He says, “I think you and I have much to discuss.”

“I’m not discussing a damn thing until you tell me who the fuck you are.”

“Call me Owen. Owen Shaw.”

Letty hopes her panic doesn’t show on her face. How long has he been following her? Why is he coming to her now? Was he waiting for Gisele to get out of the picture so he could get her alone? What does he want? Is he going to kill her?

It takes her a minute to realize that Shaw’s talking. He’s using slick words like “lucrative opportunity” and “hi-tech industry” and “business partners,” and he mentions names that she doesn’t recognize. He’s grinning the whole time, and that freaks her out the most. Then, he’s finished talking about whatever it is he wants her for.

“I understand that this is a lot to take in, so take your time, but think very carefully about your answer, Letty,” he says, stroking her hair like some kind of creep, “I’ll be in touch.”

And just like that, he’s gone, and she’s alone.


	13. Cool Gal

Gisele comes to Rio for Dom, but the person she spends most of her time with is Han. He’s clearly attracted to her—he’s a man, after all, and not a gay one—but he doesn’t push, so she doesn’t have to keep her guard up. Han is patient, honest, and genuinely interested in who she is. He’s cute, too, when he stops trying to impress her with how cool and smooth he is and lets himself be the awkward boy that lives in the heart of every man no matter how old he is.

As flattered as she is by his attention, she doesn’t return his feelings. In another life, maybe, he would’ve had a chance, but this one is too much of a mess, mostly because of her own decisions. Even so, she enjoys his company because he’s actually a nice guy who can talk to her about something other than how much he wants to have sex with her. Han is comfortable and safe, a rarity in the circles she runs in.

Sometimes, though, he surprises her. One day, they’re hanging out at the beach and talking about (what else?) cars. Less than ten meters away, two women in bikinis share a beach towel. They smile and laugh, and they hold each other in a way that says they’re more than just friends. They’re so happy they can’t hide it. Gisele hopes a shark jumps out of the ocean and eats them both.

“Were you seeing someone before you came to Rio?” asks Han.

She’s so taken aback by his question that she almost answers in Hebrew, but she recovers enough of her English vocabulary to say, “Why?“

“Not to sound like Roman, but you’ve been glaring at that couple over there for the past ten minutes. Did something happen?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want to see me anymore, and that’s all I will say.”

“She?” asks Han, a little too hopefully for her liking. Men!

 

The crew pulls off the job without a single misstep, which is phenomenal considering that there are nine of them, and the plan has so many moving parts that any one of them could go wrong. 

When the money spills out of the safe, she can hardly believe it. It takes them all day to split it up. Gisele’s putting most of her share into an offshore account where it does nothing but accumulate interest. The one splurge she’ll make is modifying a Kawasaki Ninja she’s got her eye on. With the rest, she can travel around the world with—

“Why don’t you stick around?” asks Dom.

“I can’t.”

“Look, if this is about Braga—”

“It’s not. Dom…”

Gisele sighs at her cowardice. All she has to do is tell him that Letty’s alive. She doesn’t even have to mention the rest of it. She opens her mouth, poised to tell him, but the words stop in her throat. Why the hell can’t she just say it?

“What’s wrong?” asks Dom.

“Nothing. I just…I’ll be seeing you.”

Dom gives her that goofy, boyish smile that is so different from the hard-edged, muscle-bound thug he pretends to be.

“You hiding something from me, Gisele?”

She wants to tell him so bad, just to get the weight of secrecy off her back, but she keeps her mouth shut. In the end, it’s not really her decision, but Letty’s. She still hates herself for it, though, and she can’t meet Dom’s eyes.

“I can’t say. I’m sorry, Dom.”

Dom trusts her so much that he doesn’t even ask her what she’s sorry for or even what she’s gotten so tight-lipped about, and that makes her feel like even more of a lying, backstabbing piece of shit.

“A’ight, I get it,” he says, “it’s just your way to play things close to the vest, but if you need anything, and I mean anything, don’t even think twice about asking. We’re family. We got you, a’ight?”

He uses that word a lot to describe the nine of them. Would he call her family if he knew what she was hiding from him?

"Hey, Gisele, where you goin’?” asks Tej, breaking off an argument with Roman to trot over to her.

“You leavin’, dawg?” he asks.

“I have to go,” says Gisele.

She might be imagining it, but Tej seems disappointed by that. Roman is watching them from the grill, where he tries to keep the other guys from messing up the food again. Mia tugs Brian toward her, but her smile fades when she looks over to where Gisele’s standing. She gets up.

“Gisele’s leaving?” she asks, eyes so earnestly sad to see her go. Gisele almost changes her mind on the spot because she hasn’t spent nearly enough time with Mia, and she’s been meaning to suggest nice Hebrew names for the baby.

Suddenly, everyone is all around her hugging her and wishing her a safe trip. It feels cozy, like she’s known these people all her life. She hasn’t felt like this since she left home to join the military.

Then Tej says, “Before you go, tho’, you gotta answer my question. Did he grab your ass, or did he slap it? I mean, did he hold it? Did he squeeze it? Did he give it a love tap?”

Gisele mounts her bike and starts the engine. Her heart sings at the sound of that low purr. If Letty were here, she’d want to take her for a long, fast ride. With all her friends surrounding her, offering her the warmth she’s been missing for years without knowing it, Letty’s absence doesn’t ache as sharply as it did on her way here. As she pulls onto the highway, she hears herself whispering _tefillat haderech_. The words feel right on her tongue, as if a piece of her that has been missing has returned the moment Dom called her family.


	14. Beside You In Time

Letty thumbs through Toretto’s file for what feels like the hundredth time that night. He doesn’t look like much. In fact, he looks just like all the other roided-out meatheads who got buff in the joint. This was the one who Gisele was so certain was supposed to be the love of her life? Whatever’s so special about him doesn’t come through in that photo, and his file makes him look like every other thug from every other ghetto on the planet. And Klaus had the goddamn nerve to act like she’s still got butterflies in her stomach for this guy?

Shaw told them to look for weaknesses, and Toretto’s is definitely her, but something feels…wrong about the prospect of using that against him the way Shaw most likely wants her to. She’s spent too long finding herself just to turn around and start pretending to be someone she’s not.

Letty still can’t figure out how to get Shaw off her case, though. He thinks he’s being subtle, but he’s got the finesse of a Mack truck. He constantly invades her personal space, and he leers at her when he thinks she’s not looking. If it were any other creep, she’d tell his ass to get lost or get a knee to the groin, but Shaw seems like the kind of guy who responds to those who reject him by killing them. So she puts up with it when he gets too close and asks her questions just shy of perfectly professional, and she doesn’t say a word when he grazes her hair just so, like she’s his pet.

Letty tosses the picture of Dom on the table with all the others. She picks up Gisele’s file, most of which is stamped CLASSIFIED, and skims. There isn’t much to read, and most of it starts when she rose up through Braga’s ranks. It’s funny how they know the kind of pistol she uses but not that she likes to dip her french fries in a mixture of mayonnaise and ketchup. It’s also funny how they know that she’s ex-Mossad but not that she’s the oldest of three children and was raised on a kibbutz. They know that she can ride a motorcycle, but not that she can ride a horse.

“She was wasted on Braga,” says Shaw. Letty flinches when she feels his breath on the back of her neck.

“Why didn’t you get her to work for you, then?”

“If I had known about her sooner, I would have.”

There’s something about the way Shaw says it that chills her to the core. He says it like he’d have liked to collect Gisele, like she’s a rare kind of baseball card and not a human being. He probably thinks of her that way too, as if she’s a trophy he can wave in Dom’s face when the moment comes.

“Don’t stay up too late, dear,” says Shaw, “we have a busy day tomorrow.”

There’s gotta be a way to get from under him. Letty stares at Gisele’s photo and thinks.


	15. Me and Mrs. Jones

It takes over a year, multiple attempts on their lives, and a tank flattening a freeway for Gisele and Letty to find each other again. Unfortunately, Shaw has walked out of the NATO base with the chip and, it turns out, with Riley, who was Shaw’s inside man the whole time.

“I gotta use the ladies’ room,” says Letty, and one of the NATO soldiers points toward a corridor.

“Me too,” says Gisele. She follows Letty into the hallway, trotting to reach her before she disappears into the bathroom. There’s so much to talk about, so much they need to—

She doesn’t have time to react before Letty pounces on her, kissing her fiercely and shoving her against the wall. She should put a stop to this. They should take this to the bathroom away from the guys. But Letty’s kiss sets Gisele’s blood on fire, and she can’t think of anything but how long she’s waited for this, how good this feels, and how much she wants more. Then Letty parts from her, and it’s gone.

“Miss me?” asks Letty. Gisele answers by pulling Letty flush against her and kissing her slowly, deeply, filling her arms and her mouth with Letty, Letty, Letty. Something warm slips under her shirt and cups her breast. Gisele moans. They’re so wrapped up in each other that they don’t notice—

“WHAT THE _FUCK_?!”

As soon as Roman sounds the alarm, the entire crew comes running down the hall to see her and Letty with their hands linked wearing guilty (in Gisele’s case) and defiant (Letty) expressions on their faces.

“What’s goin’ on here?” asks Dom. He looks confused and lost in a way she’s never seen him, and she put it there.

“Dom, I’m—”

“They was makin’ out! It was straight out a porno movie!”

“Man, you think everything’s a porno movie,” says Tej.

“Naw, nigga, they was using tongues! And they hands was under the shirt!”

Tej cocks an eyebrow. Brian gives her a look that says he’s glad he’s not her. Han looks so sad, and Dom—oh, G-d, Dom. Gisele sees the exact moment when his heart breaks. She wants him yell, slam her against the wall, try to hit her, something, anything. But he doesn’t. He just stands there while his face turns cold and hard.

“How long has this been goin’ on?” asks Dom, fixing a disappointed dad look straight on Gisele. It makes her want to crawl into a hole and never come out.

“Um…right after her, um, accident.”

“You knew she was alive, and you knew way back in Rio, and you didn’t say anything?”

“That’s fucked up,” Tej mutters to Roman.

“Dom, I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t want you to find out like this—”

“It sounds like you didn’t want me to find out at all.”

As Gisele flounders for a response, Letty speaks up and says, “She didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to know. And this shit is why. From the moment I woke up, every single one of you been acting like Dom owns me. It’s like I can’t even be my own fuckin’ person. I’m just an extension of him. Shaw’s a bastard, but at least he saw me as Letty and not Dominic Toretto’s bitch.”

“Aw, shit,” grumbles Roman.

“Time for me to go,” says Tej. 

“Yup,” says Brian.

Tej, Brian, Roman, and Han make their exit like they want to run but don’t want to look scared in front of the others. Gisele wishes she could join them. Instead, she pretends that she’s part of the wall.

“I thought you were dead, Letty,” says Dom.

“Don’t you get it!” shouts Letty, “the Letty you knew is dead! I’m not that person anymore! I might have some things in common with her, but I’m never gonna be the same as her.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And you do?”

Dominic glares at the two of them, “This ain’t finished. Not by a long shot.”

 

It’s relaxing to take the guns apart and clean them. The focus required to handle each piece just so clears her mind of everything but what she’s doing in that moment. She’s poking a tiny brush down the barrel of her pistol when she feels Dom approach.

“Would you have told me eventually?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

It’s the truth. It’s the least she can do at this point.

“How could you do this? After everything I’ve—why did you have to take Letty from me?”

She wishes he’d get angry. Anger she can understand. Anger she can handle. She doesn’t know what to do with hurt.

“If it means anything, we didn’t do it to hurt you. When I took Letty out of the hospital, the only thing I wanted was to keep her safe from Shaw.”

“You didn’t tell us about that either.”

“No.”

“Funny how you keep doing that.”

There is no answer for the accusation laced within his words. At least, not one that would satisfy him. She slides the pieces of her pistol together.

“I can’t give you what you want, Dom. Letty doesn’t belong to anyone but Letty.”

“You lied to my face and went behind my back,” said Dom, voice getting deeper with his simmering rage. It comforts Gisele. It proves Dom is human and not some angel or a nephilim.

“Yes. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for how you found out.”

“That’s not enough.”

“I know.”


	16. I Remember

“Where’s Gisele?” asks Mia.

A cold, jagged thing slides through Letty’s body. Gisele should be here. Gisele would be here if she could. Why isn’t she here? What happened?

Han’s face reveals nothing, and that by itself tells her what she needs to know. Mia reaches for her, tries to pull her close, but she smells different—

(from Gisele)

she feels wrong. Letty steps away from her. She pushes through the others and runs along the runway as fast as her legs can carry her. Voices call out to her, but she keeps running.

It’s so dark, just like—

_She opens her eyes to the heat of flames and the smell of gasoline. Her lungs are on fire, and her arm is not supposed to bend that way. Everything hurts. Flecks of blood splattered on the ground shine in the moonlight like morbid rubies._

the night Gisele dragged her back to life. The hard, fast throb of her heartbeat makes her ears ache. She’s grateful for the deafening roar of the jet engines. It keeps her thoughts from tumbling inward into that dark place where she puts all the things she’s afraid of thinking about.

Letty’s eyes adjust to the slick pitch black enveloping the airport. Ahead of her where that big-assed airplane passed by, there is a shape like a

(body)

person. From this distance, it still looks small, so small it could still be a dog, a piece of luggage, anything. But as Letty keeps running, and the figure becomes unmistakably

(Gisele’s)

human, that cold, heavy thing twists in her gut. She runs faster, faster, until her feet barely touch the ground. Her chest feels like acid, but she keeps running. Her legs feel like lead, but she keeps running. She has to run. She has to be certain. She has to make sure.

As she draws closer, she remembers every tender kiss—

_“Jesus, where’d you learn that?”_

_“Summer camp.”_

every soft caress—

_“Does this hurt?”_

_“Nah, I’m good.”_

every loving glance—

_“What is it?”_

_“Nothing.”_

every hard, fast drive from nowhere to nowhere.

 _Please, God, don’t let it be her_ , she prays, but her prayer is too late.

Ahead there are flashing red lights, police, and paramedics. They scrape Gisele off the runway and lift her onto the gurney, leaving a red skidmark where she’d slid after hitting the pavement. Gisele doesn’t look dead; she looks broken. There’s so much blood. Gleaming white bone pokes out of an arm and a leg. One eye is violet and swollen. Misshapen fingers twitch as air hits the exposed nerves.

People are talking, perhaps to her, but she can’t hear them through the haze of her grief. Letty should be in the ambulance with her. Gisele needs to know that she’s not alone.

“No cabe nadie más, señorita,” says one of the paramedics, “síguenos al hospital, si?”

 

Everyone sits together in the waiting area of the emergency room. Letty’s sits on pins and needles, barely holding herself together. Was it like this for Gisele when she found her on the side of the road? Was she unable to take her mind off the grisly sight of a mangled, barely human body? Did the thought of it make her want to throw up like Letty does now?

Four hours slowly tick by in silence.

A nurse wearing scrubs and sneakers comes out of the emergency room. The blood drains from Letty’s face as soon as she hears the words I’m sorry. She can barely keep from screaming as the nurse explains something about complications and blood loss and massive tissue damage. This can’t be happening. This isn’t right. Gisele wasn’t supposed to be alone.

“Do you know if she is an organ donor?” asks the nurse.

Letty can’t do this. It’s too much. It’s too soon. She can’t breathe. She can’t stand. She can’t–

her eyes close, and she feels herself falling…

falling…

falling…

 

_“Do you believe in reincarnation?” asks Letty. She flexes her toes in the sand and listens to the water and the calls of seagulls._

_“I don’t know. I try not to think about things like that,” says Gisele. The Florida sun beams down on her in such a way that it makes her seem to glow from within. She scoots closer to Letty and grazes her forearm in that habitual way she does._

_“Why not?”_

_“Because with the things I’ve done, I might get something awful.”_

_“You think you’d come back as the world’s sexiest housefly?”_

_They both laugh._

 

Dom and Brian are standing next to her bed when she wakes up.

“What happened?”

“You passed out,” says Dom.

“What about Gisele? Can we see her?”

“The doctor said you’re exhausted and a bit dehydrated.”

“But—”

“You need to get some rest,” says Brian.

“I need to see her.”

“That’s not a sight you wanna see. Trust me,” says Dom.

What the hell is this? What’s going on? Why won’t they say anything? Why won’t they let her see Gisele?

Letty hops off the bed and marches straight down the hall. Dom and Brian follow, calling after her. She peeks into every room she passes. No Gisele. Where is she? What did they do to her? 

She asks (more like grabs and shakes) a random nurse which way the morgue is, and she follows her directions to a sterile white room with about a dozen metallic doors in one wall. She grabs the cool handle of one of the doors and braces herself. She opens it.

It’s empty.

Letty pulls out another slab. This one has a toe tag marked Rodríguez, Alonso. She puts him back. She pulls out another. Castillo, Gloria. And another. And another. And another. Some of them are empty. None of them are Gisele. Until…

The toe tag on the slap is marked Yarshar/Habaro, Gisele. The toes seem shorter than she remembers them, but that could be how death changes people. 

The door to the morgue slams open, and here come Dom and Brian. Letty grips the sheet covering Gisele. She can do this. She has to do this. She has to know for sure.

“Go ahead,” says Dom. He puts his huge, heavy hand on her shoulder. His touch is gentle and soothing, lending her strength. Letty takes a deep breath and slowly pulls down the sheet.

And it’s not Gisele.


	17. One

Pain.

Can’t move.

(“Brain activity has increased.”)

Pain.

Can’t speak.

(“She twitched. Do you think she felt it?”)

Pain.

Can’t scream.

(“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s a vegetable. She can’t feel anything.”)

Everything is pain. It burns. It twists. It cuts. It stabs. It bites.

 

It’s cold when Gisele wakes up. She lies naked on an operating table. Angry red seams stretch along her arms and legs where she’s stitched together. What happened?

 

_She dangles on the side of a jeep. Han holds her tight as it speeds up and serves. Someone comes from behind Han, aims a pistol at his back. Gisele lets go. She falls and falls, drawing her sidearm, then–BLAM!–shoots Han’s attacker in the head. She closes her eyes and waits to hit the pavement._

That’s right. They were after Shaw. There was an airplane. Han was in danger. She had to stop it, so she—

She should be dead. The fall should have liquefied her. How is she alive? Did Ha Shem spare her for some higher purpose? Who saved her? Was it Letty? Han? Dom?

A door opens. Sterile light spills into the room. It hurts Gisele’s eyes.

“IT’S ALIVE! ALIVE!” shouts the figure in the doorway. It laughs.

“Hello, there,” greets the affable voice. Gisele strains her eyes to see who it is, but after so much time in the dark, it’s hard to see in the light.

“How we doing today?” asks the voice. She wants to tell it how much every part of her hurts, including her hair and toenails, but all that comes out is a feeble moan.

“Better than yesterday, right?” laughs the figure. Why is it laughing? Nothing about this is funny.

“I bet you’re confused, so I’ll try to explain everything as succinctly as I can. You’re not in Spain anymore. I can’t tell you where you are. I can’t even tell you what country you’re in. My generous benefactor, the one paying for all this, said, in no uncertain terms, that if I were to divulge to you any information about your whereabouts, I’d be taken out back and killed. So, I can’t tell you where you are. I can’t tell you who’s behind all this either because, well, they’ll take me out back and kill me. What I can tell you is that my research, my life’s work, depends entirely on certain parties interested in the activities and whereabouts of you and your associates.”

Gisele tries to ask what Letty and Dom and the others have to do with this, but what comes out of her mouth is, “…etty?”

“Etty? Who’s—ohhhh, you mean Letty. Dom’s, uh…girlfriend? Or was it wife? I dunno. I never keep up with that kind of thing, to be honest. It doesn’t matter. They all think you’re dead anyway. It’s for the best, if you ask me. I don’t think they’d want to see you, well, like this.”

“Who…are…you?” rasps Gisele. Her throat feels like buzz saw scraped against her vocal chords.

“They’re not really big on names here,” says the voice, “but you can call me Doctor. Don’t worry. I’m going to take good care of you.”

When Gisele was first learning English, she bought herself a calendar that taught her a new word every day. These were not basic words, but complicated words that made her sound intelligent when she used them. One day, there was a word that reminds her of how she feels now. The word meant, “threatening, inauspicious, the feeling or impression that something bad is about to happen.” The word for that day was, “ominous.”

 

The Doctor likes to talk. A lot. He’s like Roman that way. But unlike Roman, there’s no compassion and no humanity beneath the Doctor’s many words. The Doctor casually talks about torturing and mutilating people with the same lightheartedness and excitement that Roman has when talking about pretty girls.

As Gisele recovers from the surgery—eighty hours of operating time over the course of a week, according to the Doctor—the Doctor begins talking about the Procedure.

“You can’t imagine how thrilled I am to have you here for the procedure. This is the cutting edge of medicine, do you understand? The things we once thought of as science fiction is so close to becoming science fact, and you’re gonna be there for it. Aren’t you excited?”

“You’re insane,” hisses Gisele through her wired jaw.

“You sound just like those stuffy old pricks who took my medical license. They didn’t understand my work either. They called it ‘unethical.’ They said it’s ‘inhumane.’ Do you know what’s inhumane? Months and years of recovery and physical therapy, thousands and thousands of dollars, and for what? To get to seventy, seventy-five percent of what you were? That’s unethical; that’s inhumane! And when I get the Nobel Prize for medicine, I’m not gonna thank you in my acceptance speech.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

The Doctor’s mood lightens so fast that Gisele wonders if the genuine anger she saw earlier was even real.

“I’m so glad you asked. In layman’s terms, I’m going to put your stem cells under stress to encourage them to grow new bone and tissue at an exponential rate. In other words, you’re going to heal completely, and very fast. You’re going to be up and about in no time.”

Something about the way the Doctor says it feels less hopeful than threatening.

 

According to the Doctor, Gisele has had no food or water in over twelve hours, so she’s hungry and thirsty when the Doctor deems her well enough to have the procedure.

“Will it hurt?” she asks. It still hurts her jaw to speak and chew, but it’s far better than the tubes they fed her through when her jaw was still wired shut.

“You may feel some slight discomfort,” says the Doctor. A couple of nurses wearing masks covering their mouths just like the Doctor wheel in a defibrillator. They strap her into the bed and poke IVs into her veins. Cool metal clippers shave the hair off the sides of her head. The nurses attach tiny pads to her temples and put something made of leather into her mouth and into her hands. What are they doing?

“Are we ready?” asks the Doctor.

“Yes, doctor,” says a nurse.

“Good,” says the Doctor, flipping switches on machines Gisele doesn’t recognize. A nurse turns on the defibrillator. A low hum fills the room.

“Here we go,” says the Doctor, “begin procedure…now.”

The Doctor presses a button. Lights on machines flash, and there are slow, steady beeps.

Then the pain starts. It’s like razor blades and acid coursing through her blood, flowing into her bones, wrapping around her muscles and organs. Every single cell in her body feels like it’s on fire. The screams that tear out of her throat barely sound human. The Doctor watches, eyes alight with mad glee.

Gisele begs G-d for mercy, begs Ha Shem to make it stop, or at least let her die. It doesn’t stop.

 

_“Earth to Gisele. Earth to Gisele,” says Letty, a teasing lilt in her voice. A soft kiss presses against her lips._

_“Letty?”_

_“That’s right, Sleeping Beauty.”_

_Gisele glances around. A full moon shines on a white sand beach. Waves lap the coastline not far away. A gentle breeze stirs the red shift wrapped around Letty’s waist, tantalizing her with glimpses of the sexy red bikini beneath it._

_“Where are we?”_

_“Wherever you wanna be.”_

_“I don’t understand.”_

_Letty straddles her, and Gisele almost forgets everything else but Letty’s warm, soft thighs pressing against her waist. Wherever this is, she never wants to leave._

_“I know it’s tough out there. I know it hurts. But you have to go back.”_

_“I want to stay with you.”_

_“I’ll find you. I promise. I’m coming. You just hold on. Stay alive, OK? Whatever you gotta do, I won’t mind. Just stay alive. Will you do that for me?”_

_Gisele nods even though it makes her feel sick._

 

“CLEAR!”

A powerful shock spreads through Gisele, and she’s back to the world of pain.

“You did great. You didn’t even soil the operating table,” says the Doctor.

“Water.”

“Soon. But first, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you’re making excellent progress. Your bones and tissue are already repairing themselves at a much faster rate than normal. This is wonderful! I didn’t even expect you to survive the first phase.”

“First?”

“Yeah.”

“How many are there?”

“Phases? Uh, I planned for five, but there might be more depending on how well you take to the treatment.”

“Are they all like this?”

“Well, each phase gets more intense as we progress. You really didn’t expect this to be over after one session, did you? If I went straight to Phase Five, you’d be dead or catatonic like those other guys.”

“I hate you.”

“I told you there’d be discomfort. It’s not like I lied to you.”

Right then and there, Gisele swears to G-d that she’s going to kill the Doctor and go find Letty as soon as she gets out of this.


	18. It's a Small World

_"It's a small world after all!_  
It's a small world after all!  
It's a small world after all!  
It's a small, small world!" 

Gisele _hates_ this fucking song. They’ve been playing it at top volume for a week straight, and she passed not being able to take it anymore three days ago. She was placed in a padded cell after she gave herself a concussion by running head first into the wall of her room. Yesterday, they secured her to the bed after she tried to jam a fork into her ear just to get some fucking peace and quiet.

She can’t sleep. Even in those few moments of sleep snatched between repeats, she dreams about that fucking song. The nurses periodically come into her room to pump mush into her stomach through a tube in her nose. She begs them to let her have just one hour of rest. She promises to be good if they just turn off the music or at least play something else. She says she has to go to the bathroom. They ignore her.

Some time later, when she’s a babbling, sobbing mess, she promises to do anything for a moment’s peace. She promises in English. She promises in Spanish. She promises in Arabic. She promises in Hebrew. The music stops. She thanks God for this moment of reprieve, but the peace is short-lived, for the Doctor enters the room.

“Why?” she asks, “what are you doing to me?”

“You know I am not at liberty to say,” says the Doctor, grinning beneath the mask covering his (her?) mouth, “but I have good news! You’re going to start Phase Three soon. Isn’t that exciting?”

Gisele wants to stab him in the throat.


	19. Papa Don't Take No Mess

Hobbs is spending quality Daddy time with his baby girl when his phone buzzes from a text. When he sees Toretto’s number above a text reading _we gotta talk_ , he calls back. The phone rings.

“I’ll be right back, sweetie. Eat that spinach,“ he says.

Toretto picks up on the third ring.

“Hobbs?” he asks.

“Yeah, what you need?”

“I need you to find someone,” he says. Toretto asking for a favor? This has gotta be good.

“Who?”

“Gisele.”

Gisele, Gisele, where has he heard that name before? Right, she’s the one who was making out with Letty at the NATO base. Ex-Mossad, worked for Braga, and apparently stole Toretto’s girl right from under his nose.

“Isn’t she dead?”

“We thought she was, but her body wasn’t at the morgue. Somebody put a tag with her name on it on somebody else.”

“It could be a mistake.”

“Would you make that kinda mistake?”

Toretto had a point there. The wheels in Hobbs’ mind are already turning a million miles a minute. Who’d take Gisele’s body? How’d they do it? Where’d they take her? And, most important of all, why? Hobbs doesn’t have the answers yet, but this smells like smoke, and where there’s smoke, that fire’s not too far off.

“I’ll have something for you in twenty-four hours.”

 

E-mail is a wonderful thing.

The reply from the hospital that took Gisele in is prompt (for Spain), and it confirms his suspicion that she was taken shortly after she arrived in the emergency room. It’s unlikely that someone wasn’t expecting her. If someone was expecting her, they must have known about Shaw, and if they knew about Shaw, then they were working with him or against him. As close as he came to getting away, that person was probably working with him. If whoever it is was working with Shaw, and no law enforcement knows about them, chances are they’re above Shaw’s pay grade, and that’s a scary thought after what happened in London and Los Angeles.

“Daddy, what are you working on?” asks the only person in the world he’ll let make demands on him.

“A special project for one of Daddy’s friends, sweetheart.”

“Aren’t you gonna play catch with me?”

“Yeah, honey, I’m coming.”

He logs off and goes outside to toss the ball while there’s still light. As she rushes to hug his waist, Hobbs wonders when she got so big all of a sudden, and when he should teach her how to shoot those stank ass boys who’ll be hollering at her in a few years.

 

His superiors have called him a blunt instrument behind is back, but Hobbs wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in this field if that’s all he was. He can be very slick when he wants to be, an ace he keeps up his sleeve for moments when a smile and a honeyed tongue can get him further than a fist to the face. But punching people is a lot more fun.

Like this hipster hacker punk who keeps talking down to him like he’s a fucking moron. From the lackadaisical pace he works in, as if grown people don’t have jobs and lives that don’t involve sitting at a desk twiddling their thumbs, to those fake-ripped skinny jeans, it’s like this asshole wants to get his front teeth knocked out. Hobbs grins and flatters him because he’s got skills he doesn’t, and might run Apple or Microsoft one day, but if this kid (Zack or Zeke or whatever his name is) rolls his eyes one more time, Hobbs is gonna smack them right out his goddamn head.

“Got something,” says the kid, “there’s a Dr. Gleemen who received her in the emergency room. That doesn’t sound Spanish.”

“It isn’t. I need all the information you can get on him.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it. That’s another hundred bucks, though.”

“Don’t make me slap the taste out yo’ mouth, boy.”


	20. Journey to the Center of the Mind

When the Doctor determines that Gisele is no longer a threat to herself, they unstrap her from the bed and put her back in the padded cell where there are no windows, and it’s always white, except when they turn the lights off, and then it’s dark except one dim, red emergency light.

She spends all her time working out because she has nothing else to do. She does push-ups, squats, and whatever she can come up with to keep her body moving. Eventually, she can do a thousand push-ups (real ones, not those barely-bend-the-arms ones guys like to brag about) without stopping, and she can kick the padded wall a thousand times before her muscles ache too much to keep going. The Doctor has a heavy bag brought into her cell, and Gisele spends most of her waking hours beating the shit out of it and imagining that it’s the Doctor’s face, ribs, and groin. What she longs for most is to go for a run, to feel the sun on her face and the wind in her hair as her legs stretch and flex to keep her moving.

Periodically, the nurses toss her crunchy bars that taste like cardboard but keep her from starving while never getting her quite full. Occasionally, she’s sedated and dragged into a garage and bathed with ice-cold water from a high-powered hose. She’s cold and hungry even in her dreams.

At first, she thinks this means that Phase Three is where they starve her or try to give her pneumonia, but she’s wrong, and it’s much worse.

 

“Glad to see you up and about,” says the Doctor. She wants to choke him, but the drugs they gave her make her head feel like it’s stuffed with cotton.

“You’re regaining muscle much more quickly than I anticiapted. After all the time you spent strapped to that bed, walking should be difficult for you. But look at you now!” the Doctor says, “getting all buff! Told ya it was gonna work. Listen, not to spoil anything, but if you do well in Phase Three, we’ll see about getting you some more toys.”

“What the fuck did you give me?” slurs Gisele. Two nurses enter the room and put her in a wheelchair. They strap her in.

“How do I say this in terms a soldier would understand? It’s a kind of truth serum. They use it on suspected terrorists during interrogation. What it does is switch off a few of your neural inhibiters. It makes you lower your psychological defenses. It’s gonna help a lot for Phase Three. Just to let you know, there may be side effects afterward. Light-headedness, irritability, hallucinations, depression, suicidal ideation. Nothing unusual. But, if it’s not too much trouble, if you are planning to kill yourself, can you wait until after we’ve completed Phase Five?”

The nurses wheel her out of the room into a dimly lit corridor that goes for what feels like forever. When they finally reach the end, there’s a door marked Room 101. They open the door, and inside there’s only darkness. They push her inside then shut the door and lock it behind her.

For long moments, there is only the sound of her breathing. Compared to the other things, this isn’t so bad. It’s not even completely dark in here like she first thought. There’s a light ahead. It’s coming toward her, but it’s not a light, it’s—

“Gisele? Is that you?”

Who is that? It can’t be.

“Yosef?”

“Haven’t heard from you in a long time. Why didn’t you keep in touch? Oh, right. YOU KILLED ME!”

Yosef stands before her, eerily translucent. Blood oozes down Yosef’s face from the gaping exit wound from his forehead—what’s left of his forehead.

“Don’t turn green and look sick now. You did this! You shot me in the back of the head, you bitch! How could you do this to me!”

“You were a mole for Hamas, Yosef. They were planning to assassinate the Prime Minister, and you were helping them—”

“YOU WERE MY FRIEND!”

“Yosef, please—”

But Yosef is gone. 

Darkness again, silence again. It wasn’t real. It was her mind playing tricks on her, like the Doctor said. Whatever happens, it’s all in her head. Yet she can’t get the sight of Josef with half his head blown off out her mind. Her superiors impressed upon her that he was vital to the operation, and if push came to shove, to take him out rather than risk him getting more information to Hamas. So she did her duty to her country and swallowed the guilt so she could feel nothing when she squeezed the trigger. Mossad gave her a thanks and a medal, but she could never look at the mirror the same way after that.

She nods off after a long while, and she has fitful dreams of shooting Yosef over and over again. When she wakes up, someone is in the room with her. She can’t quite make out who it is, only a thicker darkness in the pitch black of the room.

“Who’s there?”

No answer. Of course there isn’t. Who would answer back?

“Hey, you,” says someone she hoped she wouldn’t hear from ever again. Braga stands before her wearing new clothes and that smug grin she can’t stand. Wait. Braga isn’t dead. He’s rotting in prison. Brian made sure of that. So why is he…?

“Why are you surprised to see me? I told you; I can get anywhere. I’m not dead, but I bet you wish I was, don’t you? I don’t know why. We worked so well together. Made a lotta money, didn’t we? I’d still be struggling if you didn’t help me take out my competitors. We were a good team.”

“You had me kill people for you.”

“Did I? Except for that first one, it was all your idea. As for that poor woman you killed, well, I had to test you to make sure you were the real deal. Once I knew I had a stone-cold badass motherfucker on my side, I knew nothing could stop me. So I don’t know what you’re pissed off at me for.”

“You’re a murderer who sells poison to innocent people.”

Braga smiles. “You say that like you’re any better. Who do you think you are? Robin Hood? Were you taking all that money we made and giving it to the poor? Is that why you turned your back on me for Dom? Or were you hoping he’d give you a good dicking down? Y'know, if you were horny, you could’ve asked me. I would’ve fucked you.”

“I’ve been waiting years to tell you this one thing: you’re a disgusting pig, and the next time I see you, I’m cutting your balls off.”

Braga chuckles. Gisele wants to punch his gleaming white teeth down his throat.

“I knew you still had some fight in you. How was it working with Dom? I hear he’s good to his people. Was he good to you? Ah, I forgot. You took his woman. He must not be very happy with you right now. How is Letty, by the way? Is she safe? Or did Shaw get to her by now?”

Something cold and heavy settles in Gisele’s gut. Braga laughs and laughs, and then he’s gone. For a long time, she sits in the quiet and the dark, imagining the worst has happened to Letty. She must’ve dozed off because she opens her eyes when she hears her name.

“Gisele?” rumbles a voice that sounds like a V-8 engine. She’d recognize it anywhere.

“Dom?”

And there he is in his white T-shirt and blue jeans. The rest of the crew, their family, are there with him. She can’t help smiling. They came for her! Of course they did. Why would she ever doubt they would come or that they could pull it off? She can’t wait to hear about how they found her and broke her out. But she can’t see—

“Where’s Letty?”

“Right here,” says Letty, who comes from behind her and stands next to Dom. Dom puts his hand around her waist, pulls her closer to him. She leans against his barrel chest like she’s in a romance novel.

“What’s going on?”

Letty glances at Dom, and he nods.

“Gisele, we’ve been talking it over, and we’ve decided that it’s best if you stay here.”

This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. It’s just the drugs messing with her head.

“No, no—”

“I’ve started remembering things, and me and Dom are gonna try again, but we wanna give ourselves our best chance, and we can’t do that if you’re around. It’ll just make things awkward.”

Brian, Mia, Han, and Tej all nod. Roman is uncommonly quiet.

“You’re not real. You’re not real.”

“You know it’s better without you here,” says Brian.

“Everything’s back where it belongs,” says Dom.

One by one, they start to disappear. Gisele calls out to them all, each by name and all of them together. She promises them she’ll start eating pork and shellfish and whatever roadkill Tego puts on the grill as long as they don’t leave her. She promises to say grace and talk about how much she loves Jesus, as long as they can stay with them. She swears she’ll let Tej and Roman smack her ass if they don’t go. It’s too late; they’re gone, and she’s alone.

Alone, again, as always. Why did she think any of the crew would come save her? She came between Dom and Letty, and that is a huge boundary that all of them know not to cross. And what about Letty? What if her memories are back, and everything they had became nothing to her? How could it be anything else, with Dom like the sun around which all other people orbit? Even if Letty doesn’t have her memories back, it’s only a matter of time before she does, and once she remembers what she and Dom had, only a fool would choose someone else. Letty’s too smart and too loyal to choose her over him.

It serves her right. That life was never meant to be, not for her, not ever. She’s a destroyer by nature and nurture. She was lying to herself to think otherwise.

When the Doctor and nurses arrive to take her out of Room 101, Gisele feels numb, as if her heart and soul have been scooped out. She lets the Doctor talk and talk and talk, but she doesn’t respond. The nurses manhandle her and hose her with ice-cold water, but she just lets them without putting up a fight. They toss her those food bars, but she has no appetite. She thinks about not eating anymore so she can starve to death, but what purpose would that serve? She forces herself to chew and swallow. The bars taste like ashes.


	21. Assimilate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge trigger warning for animal abuse. Repeat: huge trigger warning for animal abuse. If you like cats, and reading about them being harmed is triggering to you, it's best that you skip this chapter after Gisele gets tasered.

“Good morning, sunshine!” greets the Doctor, who then starts talking her ear off about some nonsense or other. Gisele has nothing to say anymore. Her threats were empty, her insults futile, and even answering the Doctor’s inane questions did nothing but fill the air with more noise. So she stays quiet, and she does what’s requested of her. What else is there to do?

“We start Phase Four today! Aren’t you excited? C’mon, at least say something. Call me a monster. Tell me I’m evil. C’mon, dude. Tell me all the ways you’re gonna kill me when you get outta here. Is this the silent treatment? Is that what this is? Huh? Fine, suit yourself. You’re being very immature, you know that? OK, be like that.”

The Doctor pushes a buzzer, and two orderlies she mentally calls Alpha and Beta come in wearing riot gear.

“There’s no need for all of that,” says the Doctor, “she’s been unusually compliant lately, much to my chagrin.”

Alpha and Beta respond with a taser to her neck.

 

When Gisele wakes up, she tries to turn around, but she’s restrained to sturdy wooden chair that’s been bolted to the floor. Ahead of her is a desk. There’s nothing remarkable about the desk. It’s a cheap piece of furniture one can pick up at an Ikea.

A door opens behind her. She hears several pairs of footsteps enter the room. At least three, by the sound of it. A sickeningly sweet floral scent assaults her senses as the footsteps draw near. Someone is wearing perfume. The footsteps stop, and Gisele hears the soft clack-clack-clack as someone wearing a pair of pumps walks around the chair then turns and faces her. A woman of average height stands in front of her wearing a rubber mask in the likeness of Jackie O. She wears a pink dress, pink scarf, pink pantyhose, pink gloves, and black shoes.

“Hello, YG-1985,” she says in a sing-song voice that reminds Gisele of a schoolteacher.

“Who are you?” asks Gisele.

“I’m the one responsible for your re-education that will allow you to return to polite society.”

“Re-education?”

“Oh, yes,” she says, “I’m afraid that you’re quite insane. Your case is rather severe because you seem to think you’re someone you’re not. But don’t worry, YG-1985. We’re gonna fix that.”

The last person who said they would fix her tortured her for eighty hours and called it healing. Gisele squirms in her seat as much as she is able. A tall man in a black suit places a box draped in plastic onto the desk. He removes the plastic. A large, orange cat hunches down in a metal cage. Its growls. Its green eyes narrow.

“Are you a cat person, YG-1985?”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m going to ask you some questions, and you are going to answer correctly. Shall we begin?”

“Please don’t hurt it.”

“Shall we begin? This is the last time I will ask.”

The woman’s voice sounds like a cold smile.

“Yes.”

The third person gently pushes up each of her eyelids and uses a metal clasp to keep them them open. Cold moisture drips onto her eyeballs every few seconds, a too-brief respite from the itchy burning in her eyes.

“What is your name?” asks the woman.

“Gisele Harabo.”

The woman sighs and nods at the man next to the cat, who opens a drawer and takes out a poker-shaped prod. He pushes a button, and a wicked electric spark lights up the tip. 

“What is your name?” asks the woman.

“Gisele Yashar.”

The man jabs the poker into the cat’s thigh. Gisele gasps as the cat jumps and hits its head on the bars of the cage, yowling in pain. The smell of burnt hair turns her stomach. The man jabs the cat again, which makes the cat slam into the bars of the cage again. The burnt hair stench gets stronger.

“What is your name?”

“I don’t know. Call me what you want. Please don’t hurt it anymore. Please.”

“Your name is YG-1985. Say it.”

“My name is YG-1985.”

“This is what we will call you from now on. Understand?”

“Yes.”

The woman says, “Good. That’s enough for one lesson, I think. When you come back tomorrow, we’ll really get started.”

 

Over the next few weeks, Gisele learns that the correct answer to every question is whatever the woman, whom she calls Teacher, says it is. She says that left is right and up is down. She says her favorite color is blue, red, yellow, green. What is her name? Sarah Jane, Belle, Maria. Where is she from? Greece, Brazil, Lebanon, France. What is two plus two? Five. Twenty-two. Zero. Eleven.

She gets used to saying, “I don’t know” even when she does have an answer. There are days when she answers the same question over and over again for hours on end until her throat is hoarse. With each passing day, it gets easier.

Eventually, the men in black suits don’t pin her eyes open, and then they don’t restrain her to the chair. The orange cat always cowers in its cage, bracing itself for more pain each time she answers wrong. 

Then, one day, comes the test.

 

The Teacher hands her a manila folder and instructs her to open it. Inside, there are photographs of people who, in a pleasant dream or another life, were her friends.

The first picture shows Mia holding a toddler in her arms. Has it been so long since she’s even spoken to Mia? What's the baby's name? James? No, Jack. Gisele remembers when Mia shared the news, how they smiled and drank to her, to Brian, and to family. 

The Teacher points to Mia and asks, “Who is this?”

“I don’t know,” says Gisele, as reflexively as blinking her eye.

The Teacher tilts her head. She says, “Go on.”

Gisele looks at the next picture. It’s Brian holding the baby on his shoulders and wearing a big, white smile that reaches his eyes.

The Teacher asks, “Who is that?”

“I don’t know,” says Gisele.

Gisele flips through pictures of Roman, Tej, and Han, and she answers correctly each time.

She turns to picture of Dom when he’s about twenty years old. He poses next to his bright red American muscle car, with one leg propped on the fender to show off his brand new Air Jordans.

“Who is this?” asks the Teacher.

“I don’t know,” says Gisele, rushing to get the answer right before something else gives her away. The Teacher tenses. She could hurt the cat for this, and she’s done it before, but this time she does nothing.

Then comes the final photo. It’s Dom sitting at a table, Letty in his lap, smiling and drinking a Corona as people have a party around them. Is this an old picture from when they were still together, or is this a new one of when they’ve reunited? Gisele’s chest tightens. She forces her breaths to come out slow and even. If the Teacher knows—

“Look at me,” commands the Teacher.

“Who is the woman in the picture?”

“I don’t know.”

The Teacher snatches the photo from her and slowly tears it to pieces. Gisele gasps as Letty’s face is town in two, and her body torn to pieces.

“Thought so,” says the Teacher, who then says, “Kill it.”

“No, please don’t!” cries Gisele, but it’s too late. One of the men in black suits shoots the cat, causing a low, mournful yowl before two more bullets silence it forever. What was once a living being has become an unrecognizable mass of blood, brain matter, and fur. A red spray has splattered on some torn squares of the photograph.

“Now you understand,” says the Teacher, “Every time you do the wrong thing, every time you say the wrong thing, every time you think the wrong thing, someone else will get hurt because of you. Remember that, and clean up your mess.”

Gisele gently takes the cat out of its cage. It’s already cold. She has to swallow bile as what’s left of its brain spills out of its skull. Even though it’s getting stiffer and more corpse-like with every second, she pets it as if it were alive, lending some of her own warmth to it, for all the good it does now. Tears splash on its bright orange fur.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”


	22. Irresponsible Hate Anthem

The moment that Gisele Yashar, alias Gisele Harabo, becomes YG-1985 isn’t like the flip of a switch but more like a star burning out, its heat and light fading to nothing, leaving behind cold, empty space.

The cat died because she failed. If she keeps failing, there’s no question that other innocent lives would be destroyed too, and knowing the Teacher, it’s as likely to be a child as a puppy. So, little by little, she forces herself to forget everything about Letty and the rest of those she once thought of as family. Soon, her mind simply doesn’t go there anymore, and their names are just mumbled syllables, and their faces are blurred. All that is left of them is a vague sense of loss.

This loss gives birth to deep, seething hatred. Hatred for the Teacher, hatred for the Doctor, hatred for the nurses and the men in black suits. More than all of them, she hates herself. Yet she can’t kill them, or herself, because they took everything from her, and they’re all she has left. This make her hate them and herself even more. She doesn’t say anything, can’t say anything, or else they’d take her hatred too. Each threat she suppresses, each insult she swallows, compresses this hatred upon itself, making it denser, hotter, more powerful, like magma surging beneath the earth’s surface.

She pours her rage into hitting and kicking the heavy bag in her cell faster and harder until her feet are bruised and her knuckles bleed. She pretends the blood is theirs as she imagines what she would do to them with a baseball bat, knife, or pistol. 

Only in her sleep does she find peace. There, she dreams of driving along a highway, wind whipping through her hair as she holds hands with her passenger, going faster and faster into the setting sun.

When YG-1985 wakes up one morning (if it is morning), the Doctor is standing next to her bed, beaming down at her with a broad smile.

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty! Guess what? You begin Phase Five today. Do you know what that means? You—” says the Doctor, tweaking YG-1985′s nose, “get to meet our benefactor. Finally, right? She—well, I’m not sure if I was supposed to tell you that, but I think it’s safe to tell you that our benefactor is a she—has been so thrilled with your progress. She’s been waiting for you for a long time. So, congratulations, you’ve arrived at Phase Five. Oh, and, uh, I know you’ve been in a frowny-face kind of mood, but don’t forget to smile. You’re trying to make a good impression.”

Two nurses bathe her and wash and style her hair. After they dry her—with a towel, not just time and air—they give her a set of clothes. Real clothes, not a hospital gown or flimsy pajamas. It’s nothing fancy, just black semi-tactical gear. There are even thick socks and a pair of combat boots. The clothes fit perfectly, and for the first time in however long, she feels cozy and warm.

Men in black suits escort YG-1985 to what she knows as the classroom. The Teacher waits there, as do two more men in suits carrying AK-47′s. The Doctor and the Teacher give each other a friendly wave.

“Stand over here, YG-1985,” says the Teacher. YG-1985 obeys.

The Teacher fusses with YG-1985′s clothes and asks, “How will you behave with our benefactor?”

“Hear and obey,” says YG-1985.

“Excellent,” says the Teacher, “but remember, if it weren’t for our generous benefactor, you would still be a stain on the pavement, and should you displease our generous benefactor, I’m afraid we will be forced to return you to such a state and start all over with someone else. You’d be amazed how many deceased covert ops agents disappear from hospitals every year.”

If YG-1985 had any inclination to resist, it would have died right there.

The door to the classroom opens. In walks a tall, Nordic-looking woman dressed all in white who looks like she stepped out of a fashion magazine. The woman looks directly at her and closes the distance between them in three long strides.

“Oh, she’s magnificent!” gasps the woman, smiling broad and bright.

“You’re just absolutely gorgeous!” says the woman, touching YG-1985′s arm as if checking to see if she’s real. It’s the first real human contact she’s had since…since…a long time ago. YG-1985′s arm tingles where the woman touched her.

“I can’t wait to see what you can do,” says the woman. 

YG-1985 should hate this woman even more than she hates the Teacher, the Doctor, and their helpers. This woman, though she smiles and calls her beautiful, is the reason why all of this was done to her. Yet, at the same time, her gaze and her touch make YG-1985 feel a way she hasn’t in a long time. It makes her feel human again.

“YG-1985,” says the Teacher, “this is Cypher. She’ll be taking care of you from now on.”

“Do you mind holding this? Thank you, sweetheart,” says Cypher, who gives YG-1985 a small tote bag that’s heavier than it looks.

“She’ll do anything I tell her, right?” asks Cypher.

“Yes, of course,” says the Teacher.

“Literally anything?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Anything at all?”

“We guarantee it.”

“Do you mind if I test her?”

“Not at all.”

“OK, um, YG-1985, is it? Alright, YG-1985, raise your left hand. Good. Stand on one leg. Lift it high. Wow, you’ve got great balance. You can put your leg down. OK, now unzip my purse and put your hand inside.”

YG-1985 obeys. Inside, she feels a set of keys and the cold, hard steel of a loaded pistol.

“YG-1985, kill them all, please.”

In less than four seconds, YG-1985 shoots four rounds, each of them dead-center in the chests of the men in suits. The Teacher immediately gets a bullet to the head, spraying skull and brains all over the desk where she had the cat killed. The Doctor tries to run, but he topples like a dreidel when YG-1985 sends a bullet into his back.

“I can’t feel my—” he mutters, but a bullet to the back of his head cuts off his sentence. A man in a black suit groans in agony. Three bullets silence him forever. Another tries to reach for the AK-47 he dropped when he was shot, but YG-1985 picks it up, cocks it, then sends a short burst of rounds into him. He sags down to the floor, dead. Another man in a suit seems like he’s trying to move. YG-1985 sends a spray of bullets into him too. He deflates in a splash of blood. Footsteps from the hallway approach the classroom. When the door opens, YG-1985 opens fire, cutting down both the nurses.

Just like that, in less than a minute, it’s over. YG-1985 looks at what she’s done and feels…nothing. Not the thrill of victory over her captors, not the relief of purging her anger, not the triumph of vanquishing a foe, nothing. Cypher stands in the middle of the carnage. Not a speck of blood has gotten on her outfit. She glances around as if disbelieving.

“I am definitely keeping you around,” says Cypher, “Well, now that that’s out the way, let’s get to the next order of business. I don’t like the name YG-1985. It makes you sound like a mass-produced widget. Let’s call you something more interesting, hm? Your file said you’re Israeli. Is that right?”

YG-1985 nods.

“So let’s name you after something from the desert, something deadly like—Scorpion. Isn’t that a cool name?”

Scorpion nods. Cypher smiles.

“Scorpion it is. Y’know, Scorpion, believe this could be the start of a long and productive collaboration.”


	23. My World Is Empty Without You

They say it gets better over time, but now Letty knows that’s bullshit. It never gets better. You just get used to it. The loss, the loneliness, the gnawing sense of wrongness, they become part of you. Like a scar.

Half the time Letty wonders what she’d do if Hobbs ever manages to find Gisele. Part of her wants to smack her upside the head for that stupid shit she pulled that got her into whatever she’s gotten herself into. Part of her wants to kiss her all over and hold her tight and never let go. Chances are she’ll do both

(if)

 _when_ they finally bring her home.

But the thing that makes her feel like a monster, that makes her sick to her stomach, is that sometimes, she thinks it would’ve been better if Gisele had died on that runway. Gisele being dead and gone for sure beats the not knowing. God, what kind of selfish asshole must she be to think something like that?

Even though Gisele is God-knows-where, Letty tries to stay as close to her as she can. She wears a Star of David on a delicate gold necklace similar to the one Gisele wore. She lights candles on Friday evenings when she visits Brian and Mia. She doesn’t know the words, but she remembers…

_“Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.”_

_“That’s pretty,” says Letty, “What is it?”_

_“It’s the blessing for lighting candles on Shabbat.”_

_“Why do you light candles?”_

_Gisele shrugs, “Tradition.”_

_She takes off her earrings and pulls off her slinky black dress, quickly followed by her bra and panties. Letty has to remind herself to breathe when Gisele slides into bed beside her._

At Sunday dinner, she always makes sure that the guys remember to mention Gisele during the toast to absent family. She pretends not to notice Dom’s crestfallen look when she does it.

Then, the car came.

 

One Saturday afternoon, one of Dom’s old buddies brings a 1968 Pontiac Firebird 400 to the garage. The engine chokes and belches smoke, and it’s badly in need of a paint job, but there’s nothing wrong with it that a little TLC and elbow grease can’t fix. Letty can already see the sleek, powerful machine waiting to come out.

She gets started on it as soon as the keys are in her hand. With help from Tej, she replaces the old engine with a brand new V-8 and adds modifications from bumper to bumper to make it faster, smoother, and more fuel-efficient. By the time she’s ready to do the bodywork, the car is less a production model than a custom vehicle.

“This gonna be your new ride?” asks Dom, giving the car an appraising look.

“It’s not for me.”

“Trying to convert Gisele to American muscle?” asks Dom, a smile spreading on his face.

“You say that like you don’t like imports more than you let on.”

“I appreciate good body work as much as the next guy.”

“Does Elena know about that?” she teases.

Dom laughs, rumbling like an earthquake. “How you thinking ‘bout painting this bad boy?”

“I dunno. You got any ideas?”

“Can’t go wrong with black.”

“How’d I know you’d say that?”

Dom grins. For a second, the history between them is light and comforting, not weighed down by memory. Then Letty shatters the moment by bringing real shit to it.

“Hobbs find out anything else?”

Dom tenses, “He tracked the doctor to a small town in eastern Europe.”

“And?” asks Letty, fine-tuning the fuel injection system with a wrench.

“He’s dead.”

“Tripped and fell on his guilty conscience?”

“Somebody capped him and about a dozen other people. Then they burned the building down.”

Letty’s gut twists in time with her wrist as she twists the wrench under the hood of the car. So much for death being easier.

“Was—”

“Gisele won’t one of ‘em.”

Letty sighs, silently thanking God that the worst hasn’t happened, but there’s something fishy about the news. A dozen people dead and no sign of Gisele? It doesn’t quite add up. Unless…

“Is there something you ain’t telling me, Dom?”

Dom takes a breath and licks his lips in that way she recognizes, but doesn’t remember, as him about to deliver bad news.

“Hobbs said that whoever took out those people had to be a hell of a marksman.”

That sounds just like somebody Letty knows.


End file.
